A Quantitative Analysis Of The Value-Enhancing Effects Of Nicotine, Bupropion, And Varenicline In Male And Female Rats, Scott Barrett

Department of Psychology: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Smoking and tobacco dependence are serious health concerns in the United States and globally. Reward via the pharmacological effects of nicotine are believed to be the principal motivating factor that drive tobacco dependence. Research reveals differences in sensitivity between males and females to the motivational effects of nicotine in tobacco use. Enhancement of reinforcement value of non-nicotine rewards contributes to overall nicotine reward. Similar value-enhancing effects have been observed by the two most commonly prescribed smoking cessation aids, bupropion and varenicline. The present dissertation investigated the value-enhancing effects of nicotine, bupropion and varenicline in both male and female rats using …

Alcohol Use Disorders And An Fmri Stress Task: A Connectivity Analysis, Natasha E. Wright

Theses and Dissertations

Little research has been conducted on neuronal stress processing in individuals

with alcohol dependence (AD). The present study examined neural stress response in AD individuals compared to controls using an fMRI stress task, assessing amygdala

activation and its connectivity to the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). Further, the study

analyzed the impact of hormone levels and subjective stress on frontal-limbic

connectivity patterns.

Ten abstinent AD individuals and 11 controls were recruited. Subjects

participated in an fMRI stress task. A region of interest (amygdala) analysis was

conducted using area-under-the-curve. This activation was then examined in a whole brain functional connectivity analysis. Follow-up …

Perceived Depth In Non-Transitive Stereo Displays, Bart Farell, Cherlyn J. Ng

Biomedical and Chemical Engineering - All Scholarship

The separation between the eyes shapes the distribution of binocular disparities and gives a special role to horizontal disparities. However, for one-dimensional stimuli, disparity direction, like motion direction, is linked to stimulus orientation. This makes the perceived depth of one-dimensional stimuli orientation dependent and generally non-veridical. It also allows perceived depth to violate transitivity. Three stimuli, A, B, and C, can be arranged such that A > B (stimulus A is seen as farther than stimulus B when they are presented together) and B > C, yet A ≤ C. This study examines how the visual system handles the depth of A, …

The Role Of Brain-Synthesized E2 In Hippocampal Learning And Memory Consolidation In Female Mice, Jennifer Tuscher

Theses and Dissertations

The potent estrogen 17beta-Estradiol (E2) plays a critical role in neuroprotection, serving as an important trophic factor for neurons in the hippocampus, basal forebrain, and prefrontal cortex (Brinton, 2001). In the hippocampus, E2 promotes neurogenesis (Tanapat et al., 1999, Prange-Kiel et al., 2006), protects against cell death after ischemic injury (Garcia-Segura et al., 2001, Zhao and Brinton, 2007), and helps maintain spine morphology crucial for synaptic connectivity and memory (Woolley et al., 1990; Gould et al., 1990, Woolley and McEwen, 1992, Li et al., 2004). However, the mechanisms through which E2 promotes synaptic plasticity and enhances memory function are largely …

The Phenomenon Of Abstract Cognition Among Scholastic Chess Participants: A Case Study, Brent C. Laws

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A qualitative investigation was conducted to explore the phenomenon of abstract cognition among a purposive sample of 5 secondary scholastic chess club participants. The case study enabled the researcher to explore the faculties of abstract cognition among students of contrasting skills and abilities in playing chess. The study also allowed for the consideration of potential visual-spatial, logical, academic, social competency and life benefits of chess play. Through analysis of interviews, chess simulations, blindfold chess play, and narration of chess lines and sequences, the investigator was able to extract meaning and code schemata into a holistic understanding of the phenomenon of …

Effects Of Oxytocin On Human Aggression, Joseph L. Alcorn Iii

Dissertations & Theses (Open Access)

EFFECTS OF OXYTOCIN ON HUMAN AGGRESSION

Joseph Louis Alcorn III, B.S.

Advisory Professor: Scott D. Lane, Ph.D.

Human interaction is comprised of common, yet complex, behaviors and the outcomes of these social behaviors can beneficially or detrimentally impact individual and public health. One social behavior that can have profound detrimental outcomes is aggression. Aggression is a class of social behavior that is particularly prevalent in individuals with antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) and comorbid substance use disorder (SUD). Aggression in these individuals can manifest at maladaptive levels that place considerable burdens on public health and communities. Therefore, understanding the neurobehavioral underpinnings …

Change Detection In Rhesus Monkeys And Humans, Deepna T. Devkar, Deepna T. Devkar

Dissertations & Theses (Open Access)

Visual working memory (VWM) is the temporary retention of visual information and a key component of cognitive processing. The classical paradigm for studying VWM and its encoding limitations has been change detection. Early work focused on how many items could be stored in VWM, leading to the popular theory that humans could remember no more than 4±1 items. More recently, proposals have suggested that VWM is a noisy, continuous resource distributed across virtually all items in the visual field, resulting in diminished memory quality rather than limited quantity. This debate about the nature of VWM has predominantly been studied with …

Hemispheric Asymmetry In The Perception Of Musical Pitch Structure, Matthew Adam Rosenthal

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Both the left and right hemispheres contribute to the perception of pitch structure

in music. Music researchers have attempted to explain the observed asymmetries in the perception of musical pitch structure by characterizing the dominant processing style of each hemisphere. However, no existing characterizations have been able to account for all of the empirical findings. To better explain existing empirical findings, this dissertation characterizes the left hemisphere as dominant in temporal pitch processing (i.e. with respect to the sequential ordering of pitches) and the right hemisphere as dominant in non-temporal pitch processing (i.e. without respect to the sequential ordering of …

A Movement Tool Kit For The Divergent And Convergent Cps Guidelines: Instruction Cards And Activity Floor Mats, Adela Vangelisti

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

A Movement Tool Kit for the Divergent and Convergent CPS Guidelines:

Instruction Cards and Activity Floor Mats

Movement is as natural to humans as breathing is, and, yet, passivity starts early in schools. We are taught to sit still and in silence for long periods of time. By the time we reach adulthood and enter the workforce, we have almost forgotten our sense of embodiment. This lack of movement is counter-productive, not only to learning but to the development of creativity as well. For this project, I designed a tool to recapture the joy and playfulness of movement. Furthermore, the …

Sustained Adrenergic Signaling Promotes Cervical Cancer Progression, Nouara C. Sadaoui

Dissertations & Theses (Open Access)

Background: Chronic stress and sustained adrenergic signaling are known to promote tumor progression. The underlying mechanisms behind this process are not well understood. We examined the effects of sustained adrenergic signaling on cervical cancer progression through increased expression of HPV oncogenes, E6 and E7.

Materials and Methods: ADRβ expression levels were examined in patient-derived cervical cancer samples. We used an orthotopic model of cervical cancer to investigate the effects of restraint stress on tumor growth and metastasis. We evaluated the in vivo effects of a β-blocker, propranolol, and HPV E6/E7 siRNA. In vitro, ADRβ positive cervical cancer cells were …

Adolescent Bisphenol-A Exposure Decreases Dendritic Spine Density: Role Of Sex And Age, Rachel E. Bowman, Victoria N. Luine, Hameda Khandaker, Joseph J. Villafane, Maya Frankfurt

Psychology Faculty Publications

Bisphenol-A (BPA), a common environmental endocrine disruptor, modulates estrogenic, androgenic, and anti-androgenic effects throughout the lifespan. We recently showed that low dose BPA exposure during adolescence increases anxiety and impairs spatial memory independent of sex. In the current study, six week old Sprague Dawley rats (n=24 males, n=24 females) received daily subcutaneous injections (40 µg/kg bodyweight) of BPA or vehicle for one week. Serum corticosterone levels in response to a 1 h restraint stress and spine density were examined at age 7 (cohort 1) and 11 (cohort 2) weeks. Adolescent BPA exposure did not alter stress dependent corticosterone responses but …

Dynamics Of Alpha Control: Preparatory Suppression Of Posterior Alpha Oscillations By Frontal Modulators Revealed With Combined Eeg And Event-Related Optical Signal, Kyle E. Mathewson, Diane M. Beck, Tony Ro, Edward L. Maclin, Kathy A. Low, Monica Fabiani, Gabriele Gratton

Publications and Research

We investigated the dynamics of brain processes facilitating conscious experience of external stimuli. Previously, we proposed that alpha (8–12 Hz) oscillations, which fluctuate with both sustained and directed attention, represent a pulsed inhibition of ongoing sensory brain activity. Here we tested the prediction that inhibitory alpha oscillations in visual cortex are modulated by top–down signals from frontoparietal attention networks. We measured modulations in phase-coherent alpha oscillations from superficial frontal, parietal, and occipital cortices using the event-related optical signal (EROS), a measure of neuronal activity affording high spatiotemporal resolution, along with concurrently recorded EEG, while participants performed a visual target detection …

Executive Dysfunction And Reward Dysregulation: Interactions In Drug Addiction, Kristen Paula Morie

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Cocaine addiction is a serious public health hazard, and contributes to disastrous outcomes for individuals who suffer from it. Addiction is accompanied by an inability to control one's own behavior, and a preoccupation with cocaine at the expense of other rewarding pursuits. Previous research has suggested that difficulties with executive function and reward processing may underlie these problems, but the extent to which each contributes to addiction severity, or how these two factors may interact, remains to be elucidated. By using event related potential (ERP) measures in combination with information about self-reported anhedonia over three experiments, we set out to …

The Effects Of Environmental Enrichment On Abstinence And Relapse Using An Animal Conflict Model, Joshua Alan Peck

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Heroin addiction is a significant health and societal problem for which there is no effective and well-accepted long-term behavioral or pharmacological treatment. Therefore, strategies that prolong heroin abstinence should be the primary focus of heroin treatment research. There is promising evidence that environmental enrichment may indeed support drug abstinence in animals using the reinstatement model of abstinence and relapse. The current studies used an animal conflict model that captures the aversive consequences of drug seeking (as are typical in humans, e.g., arrest, incarceration, job loss, and strained social relationships) to test the effects of environmental enrichment on heroin abstinence, prolonged …

Attention Shapes Our Expectations And Perceptions: The Neural Mechanisms Of Top-Down Attention During Adulthood And Development, Snigdha Banerjee

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Top-down attention is the focusing of attention at one's will through knowledge regarding a current task. There is evidence that top-down attention involves the modulation of sensory cortices by higher order regions. However, the mechanisms of top-down attention across sensory modalities, its influence on early sensory inputs, as well as interactions with motivational systems remain unclear. We performed the following set of electrophysiological experiments in typically developed adults and adolescents to examine these areas. 1) The supramodal attentional theory holds that parietally-based attentional mechanisms are shared across sensory modalities. We tested the supramodal theory by examining if lateralized parieto-occipital alpha-band …

Psychic Collapse And Traumatic Defense: How The Mind Mediates Trauma Living In The Body, Patricia Kim Yoon

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The aim of this exploratory study was to link psychoanalytic theories of trauma and its impact on the mind with psychobiological research of how trauma lives in the body. The study has expanded on prior research (Cramer, 2003) to evidence that defense mechanisms do in fact moderate the relationship between stress and physiological response, and that there are likely individual differences in physiological response to traumatic stress. This study goes further to identify the psychological concomitants of these individual differences within an adult population exposed to potentially traumatic events (PTEs), and their proclivity for using different defense mechanisms. Defense use …

A Behavioral And Biopsychological Investigation Of The Role Of The Illusion Of Control And Perseverative Chasing Between Problem And Non-Problem Gamblers, Brett Evan Bauchner

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The illusion of control is associated with problem gambling. The perception that one is in control of a random event, when in reality there is no control, can facilitate problem gambling behaviors. The degree or extent of control may activate physiological mechanism of increased excitation and reward that reinforce gambling. In the studies presented here, performance on simulated gambling tasks that provided varying levels gambling participation were compared to physiological measures of behavioral activation in problem gambler and nongamblers. Participants watched video clips of three horseraces scenarios that permitted different degrees of participation and control over wagering. Concurrently saliva samples …

Mental Representations, Social Exclusion, And Neurobiological Processes In Borderline Personality Disorder: A Multi-Level Study, Jeffrey K. Erbe

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is an ongoing public health crisis. Poor developmental quality of differentiation-relatedness of object representations and attachment insecurity have been clinically and empirically demonstrated as core patterns of intrapsychic and interpersonal dysfunction in this particular form of personality pathology. Differentiation-relatedness (D-R), which involves a complementary relationship between intrapsychic autonomy and interpersonal relatedness, has been shown to be a significant aspect of internal psychic experience that relates directly to external relationship patterns, including characteristic response to interpersonal interactions and has been a specific target for treatment of BPD. Specifically, individuals with BPD have shown lower developmental quality of …

Biological Motion Processing In Typical Development And In The Autism Spectrum, Aaron Krakowski

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Biological motion (BM) analysis and interpretation is a fundamental process of human neurocognition that has been only minimally explored neurophysiologically. In addition to its importance in understanding the underlying roots and development of social cognition, BM processing is a prime candidate domain for exploring the underlying etiology of social cognitive disorders such as the autism spectrum.

In an initial experiment, typical adults observed BM point-light displays of a human actor (UM) as well as their spatially scrambled counterparts (SM), in both an unattended distractor task as well as an explicit attention task. Results showed a neurophysiological response manifested as three …

Asenapine Sensitization From Adolescence To Adulthood And Its Potential Molecular Basis, Qing Shu, Rongyin Qin, Yingzhu Chen, Gang Hu, Ming Li

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Asenapine is a new antipsychotic drug that induces a long-lasting behavioral sensitization in adult rats. The present study investigated the developmental impacts of adolescent asenapine treatment on drug sensitivity and on 3 proteins implicated in the action of antipsychotic drugs (i.e. Brainderived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), dopamine D₂ receptor, and ΔFosB) in adulthood. Male adolescent Sprague-Dawley rats (postnatal days, P 43-48) were first treated with asenapine (0.05, 0.10 or 0.20 mg/kg, sc) and tested in the conditioned avoidance or PCP (2.0 mg/kg, sc)-induced hyperlocomotion tasks for 5 days. After they became adults (∼P 76), asenapine sensitization was assessed in a …

Integrating Cognitive Science With Innovative Teaching In Stem Disciplines, Mark A. Mcdaniel, Regina F. Frey, Susan M. Fitzpatrick, Henry L. Roediger Iii

Books and Monographs

This volume collects the ideas and insights discussed at a novel conference, the Integrating Cognitive Science with Innovative Teaching in STEM Disciplines Conference, which was held September 27-28, 2012 at Washington University in St. Louis. With funding from the James S. McDonnell Foundation, the conference was hosted by Washington University’s Center for Integrative Research on Cognition, Learning, and Education (CIRCLE), a center established in 2011. Available for download as a PDF. Titles of individual chapters can be found at http://openscholarship.wustl.edu/circle_book/.

Intergeniculate Leaflet Lesions Result In Differential Activation Of Brain Regions Following The Presentation Of Photic Stimuli In Nile Grass Rats, Andrew J. Gall, Lily Yan, Laura Smale, Antonio A. Nunez

Faculty Publications

The intergeniculate leaflet (IGL) plays an important role in the entrainment of circadian rhythms and the mediation of acute behavioral responses to light (i.e., masking). Recently, we reported that IGL lesions in diurnal grass rats result in a reversal in masking responses to light as compared to controls. Here, we used Fos as a marker of neural activation to examine the mechanisms by which the IGL may influence this masking effect of light in grass rats. Specifically, we examined the patterns of Fos activation in retinorecipient areas and in brain regions that receive IGL inputs following 1-h light pulses given …

Buildings With Brain Power: Library Architecture In Neural Terms., Hannah Bennett

Hannah Bennett

The connection between neuroscience and the built environment is a fairly new interdisciplinary field and one in which both fields, in their respective pursuits, have worked to understand the relationship between design choices, human behavior, and biological processes. Taken together and applied in tandem, these two activities have potential to vastly improve the effectiveness of buildings designed with the healthcare facilities, laboratories, or elementary schools, all of which share objectives of healing and intellectual cultivation. This paper will extend the dialogue to library design, perhaps the most representationally loaded expression of “mental space.” The library has seen profound changes in …

What Can Individual Differences Reveal About Face Processing?, Galit Yovel, Jeremy B. Wilmer, Brad Duchaine

Dartmouth Scholarship

Faces are probably the most widely studied visual stimulus. Most research on face processing has used a group-mean approach that averages behavioral or neural responses to faces across individuals and treats variance between individuals as noise. However, individual differences in face processing can provide valuable information that complements and extends findings from group-mean studies. Here we demonstrate that studies employing an individual differences approach—examining associations and dissociations across individuals—can answer fundamental questions about the way face processing operates. In particular these studies allow us to associate and dissociate the mechanisms involved in face processing, tie behavioral face processing mechanisms to …

Effect Of Environmental Cues On Behavioral Efficacy Of Haloperidol, Olanzapine And Clozapine In Rats, Tao Sun, Xinfeng Liu, Ming Li

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Previous studies have reported that context can powerfully modulate the inhibitory effect of an antipsychotic drug on phencyclidine (PCP)-induced hyperlocomotion (a behavioral test used to evaluate putative antipsychotic drugs). The present study investigated the experimental conditions under which environmental stimuli exert their influence through associative conditioning processes. Experiment 1 examined the extent to which prior antipsychotic treatment in the home cages affected a drug’s ability to inhibit PCP-induced hyperlocomotion in a novel motor activity test apparatus. Five days of repeated haloperidol (0.05 mg/kg, sc) and olanzapine (2.0 mg/kg, sc) treatment in the home cages still potentiated their inhibition of PCP-induced …

Memory Retrieval Is Maintained By Intrinsic And Synaptic Plasticity In Prelimbic Cortex, James Otis

Theses and Dissertations

Abnormally strong memories underlie common disorders including addiction and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Memory disruption would therefore be beneficial for treatment of these disorders. Evidence reveals that cocaine conditioned place preference (CPP) memories are susceptible to long-lasting disruption during memory retrieval. For example, inhibition of β-adrenergic receptor (β-AR) activity within the prelimbic medial prefrontal cortex (PL-mPFC) prevents cocaine CPP memory retrieval, and this retrieval impairment is both long-lasting and prevents subsequent reinstatement of the CPP. Despite this, whether PL-mPFC β-AR activity is a fundamental mechanism required to maintain retrieval of other memories is unclear. Furthermore, how PL-mPFC β-AR activity maintains …

Neurophysiological And Morphological Plasticity In Rat Hippocampus And Medial Prefrontal Cortex Following Trace Fear Conditioning, Chenghui Song

Theses and Dissertations

Pavlovian fear conditioning provides a useful model system for investigating the mechanisms underlying associative learning. In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in "trace" fear conditioning, which requires conscious awareness of the contingency of CS and US therefore considered as a rodent model of explicit fear. Acquisition of trace fear conditioning requires an intact hippocampus and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), but the underlying mechanisms are still unclear. The current set of studies investigated how trace fear conditioning affects neuronal plasticity in both hippocampus and mPFC in adult rats. Trace fear conditioning significantly enhanced both intrinsic excitability and synaptic …

The Effect Of Acute Lps-Induced Immune Activation And Brain Insulin Signaling Disruption In A Diabetic Model Of Alzheimer's Disease, Andrew Scott Murtishaw

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disorder marked by progressive cognitive impairments and pathological hallmarks that include amyloid plaques, neurofibrillary tangles, and neuronal loss. Several well-known mutations exist that lead to early-onset familial AD (fAD). However, these cases only account for a small percentage of total AD cases. The vast majority of AD cases are sporadic in origin (sAD) and are less clearly influenced by a single mutation but rather some combination of genetic and environmental risk.

The etiology of sAD remains unclear but numerous risk factors have been identified that increase the chance of developing AD. Among these risk …

Behavioral And Neuroanatomical Abnormalities In Pleiotrophin Knockout Mice, Jason W. Krellman, Henry H. Ruiz, Veronica A. Marciano, Bracha Mondrow, Susan D. Croll

Publications and Research

Pleiotrophin (PTN) is an extracellular matrix-associated protein with neurotrophic and neuroprotective effects that is involved in a variety of neurodevelopmental processes. Data regarding the cognitive-behavioral and neuroanatomical phenotype of pleiotrophin knockout (KO) mice is limited. The purpose of this study was to more fully characterize this phenotype, with emphasis on the domains of learning and memory, cognitive-behavioral flexibility, exploratory behavior and anxiety, social behavior, and the neuronal and vascular microstructure of the lateral entorhinal cortex (EC). PTN KOs exhibited cognitive rigidity, heightened anxiety, behavioral reticence in novel contexts and novel social interactions suggestive of neophobia, and lamina-specific decreases in neuronal …

Similarities Between Human And Animal Spatial Memory: Item And Order Information, Robert H.I. Dale

Robert H. I. Dale

Human subjects, sitting at the center of a circle of eight lights, were tested on analogues of radial-maze item-recognition (Roberts & Smythe, 1979) and order-recognition (Kesner & Novak, 1982) tasks. Subjects in the item-recognition condition saw a list of seven lights, and then the nonlist (eighth) light was tested against the first, fourth, or seventh light from the list. The sub- jects were required to point toward the non list light. Subjects in the order-recognition condition saw a series of eight lights, followed by a test of the first and second, fourth and fifth, or seventh and eighth serial positions. …